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DonCorson
[AHCI]
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BaselWorld 2013 : Antoine Martin

BaselWorld 2013 : Antoine Martin

Antoine Martin has been a well guarded secret for a couple of years now.  Martin Braun, the technical brains of this outfit can't unfortunately, use his own name for the brand due to the sale of his former brand.  With pocket watch sized watches this brand has been sort of off my radar as IMHO they are simply too big.  On the other hand the big slow turning balance wheels coupled with modern silicon escapements of their own design make for a successful mixture of traditional and modern elements.   

The Antoine Martin watches include tourbillons and perpetual calendars always with relatively big balance wheels running at pocket watch standard rates.  This year Martin Braun has taken that characteristic to the extreme with a 1 Hertz movement which makes two ticks a second.  As you can see the balance wheel takes up most of the diameter of the movement, slowly ticking you can see the silicon hairspring expand and contract once a second too.  

Martin Braun has taken special precautions so that the balance axle is protected from breakage despite the size and weight of the balance wheel.  There are several rubies that are used simply as travel limiters for the balance wheel in addition to the standard axle protection system.  

This watch, called the "Slow Runner" is wonderful, even if I think the dial could accept some improvement of design, the one hertz movement is mesmerising.  It fits in perfectly with present "slow-up" tendencies.  According to Martin that is also the primary goal of this development.  Calming down, less hectic, more thinking about what we are doing.  This watch is the leasurely contrary of the high speed movements that have sprung up all around recently, with their tiny balance wheels beating frantically at 36'000 bph. Here we see a big balance wheel of 24mm beating slowly and calmly at 7'200 bph.  Martin admits that the timekeeping will not be as good as the fast beat movements, he talks of errors when worn of less than 15 seconds a day on the prototypes which should get better in production.  Still these watches will never have chronometer performance, but calm down, you've got the time.

With such a mesmerising watch on my wrist there was no way that I couldn't give it my